Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Story of Old China, part 3, sentence 136
They seem to belong to some big man, but their dialect is not of this province.”
Who acts: neighbours, dialect · What happens: seem, belong, not be
This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Story of Old China, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (neighbours, dialect), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
Mova's own parse. This tree may be wrong.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | They | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 seem | nsubj |
| 2 | seem | seem | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | to | to | PART | _ | 4 belong | mark |
| 4 | belong | belong | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 seem | xcomp |
| 5 | to | to | ADP | _ | 8 man | case |
| 6 | some | some | DET | PronType=Ind | 8 man | det |
| 7 | big | big | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 man | amod |
| 8 | man | man | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 belong | obl |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 17 province | punct |
| 10 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 17 province | cc |
| 11 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 12 dialect | nmod:poss |
| 12 | dialect | dialect | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 province | nsubj |
| 13 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 17 province | cop |
| 14 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 17 province | advmod |
| 15 | of | of | ADP | _ | 17 province | case |
| 16 | this | this | DET | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 17 province | det |
| 17 | province | province | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 seem | obl |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 seem | punct |
| 19 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 2 seem | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | seem | present | neighbours = neighbour | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute | |||||
| 2 | belong | to-infinitive | neighbours = neighbour not said here | to some big man | vn attend-107.4-2 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 3 | not is | present | neighbours's dialect | of this province | tree rules |
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.
Text: «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, Project Gutenberg book 75089 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/19/136/